Time travel

Time travel is the theoretical concept of moving someone or something between different points in time, such as the past or the future. A popular story element in science fiction, time travel is occasionally featured and mentioned in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic and its related materials.

Depiction in the series

Season two

In It's About Time, Twilight is visited by herself from one week in the future. This future Twilight—having a messy mane and a scar on her face and wearing a tattered black suit, head bandage, and eyepatch—tries to warn her past self about something related to "next Tuesday morning", but she vanishes before she can deliver her message.

Believing that her future self was trying to warn her about an upcoming catastrophic event, Twilight spends the next week trying to prevent it. Over the course of the week, Twilight slowly takes on her future self's appearance due to a series of accidents. Unable to stop the "disaster" from happening, Twilight decides to stop time using a scroll in the Canterlot Archives, but she fails to find the scroll before Tuesday morning.

When no disaster occurs, Twilight realizes that she has been worrying over nothing. Using a spell to briefly travel back in time, Twilight tries to warn her past self not to worry about a disaster that isn't going to happen. However, she is pulled back to the future before she can deliver her message, effectively ensuring that the events she was trying to prevent will occur.

Season five

In Slice of Life, when Derpy accidentally messes up the invitations for Cranky Doodle Donkey and Matilda's wedding, she expresses a desire to "go back in time and fix all this." The science and mathematics-obsessed Dr. Hooves hears this and says he had been working on a theory of "making time come forward."

Pinkie Pie dressed as Back to the Future's Marty McFly.

In What About Discord?, Twilight misses out on spending a bonding three-day weekend with her friends. Rarity and Pinkie Pie briefly suggest time travel in order to relive the weekend's events, but Twilight says, "Time travel is not something to be messed with."

Season seven

In All Bottled Up, Trixie says to Twilight, "If anything breaks, Starlight will just go back in time and fix it!"

In It Isn't the Mane Thing About You, Zecora tells Rarity that the only way to regain her mane immediately is to travel back in time, but Twilight and Starlight, both remembering the events of The Cutie Re-Mark, assure them that time travel is not ideal.

Other depictions

In My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issue #24, Discord arrives to his monthly hangout session with Fluttershy a week early as a result of flying too fast and going back in time. When Fluttershy goes on a nature observation hike with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Discord livens up the outing by taking the ponies on a journey through time. They travel to the lost civilization of Anugypt, the distant future, and the prehistoric era.

On pages 64-65 of The Journal of the Two Sisters, Princess Celestia writes about Star Swirl the Bearded's time travel spell and that he "desperately wants to travel through space and time with no limitations." On page 91, Celestia writes, "Whenever Star Swirl travels in time, he is very careful not to tell [Celestia and Luna] anything about [their] future."

In Gameloft's mobile game, "Lyra & Bon Bon Save Hearth's Warming Eve: Dr. Whooves has opened a portal to the past, to observe the Hearth's Warming Eve legend. But things went awry and he accidentally released the Windigos! Only Bon Bon and Lyra can come to the rescue and send back the Windigos before they ruin the holidays for everypony!"[2]

In the Hot Topic promotional video Hot Minute with Twilight Sparkle, one of Twilight's interview questions is "IF YOU COULD TIME TRAVEL". Twilight answers, "I would love to go back and see Princess Celestia and Luna growing up together as young fillies."

Merchandise

Pages 174-175 of the My Little PonyguidebookThe Elements of Harmony are about the season two episode It's About Time.

In Enterplay's trading cards, series 1 card #54 "You're not scientifically possible!", series 2 card #56 Starswirl's Time Travel Spell, and series 3 card #E46 It's About Time also allude to It's About Time. In the Enterplay collectible card game's sets, Equestrian Odysseys cards #52 C and #Pƒ9 of Dr. Hooves both allude to the season five episode Slice of Life, and Sands of Time​[​dubious – discuss‍​]​[3] card #1 F of Dr. Hooves attributes to Roseluck and also lists the respective quotes "If you could go to any time or place in history, where would you want to go?" and "When. WHEN would I want to go."[4][5]

The fan-designed WeLoveFine T-shirt "Back from the past" features Twilight Sparkle as she appears from the future in It's About Time.[6]